Martin Langeveld, a man with several years in the publishing industry, has recently released a white paper on the iPad’s opportunities for publishers. It’s based on a presentation he gave to an audience whose mindset is stuck somewhere back in time. Considering this circumstance, he steps up quite progressive, involving ideas of permission marketing, building a fan base with your subscribers. But he also suggests trying to force Apple to give away customer data so the publishers would have easier access to their yet-to-become-subscribers’ personal information, hence easier game on ads and monetization. Stupid old habit.
Whenever something remarkable hits the marketplace, it’s good that obviously no member of the old guard has been on the board who made it happen. Because their demand would have been: “Can’t you make it so it’s more like TV? Y’know, back then when there were only 3 networks?”
Sorry to repeat myself, but TV as in 20th century TV is over. Finito. Kaput. Looking at the history of communication, 50 years of TV are just a tiny fraction. Yet it seems to be the one with the most impact so far, mainly because we were foolish enough to believe what the box told us. What the nostalgia addicts are asking for is not TV as a medium, but the sheepishness of its audience. Now there is a medium on which almost everyone is a sheep, because no one can predict what’s next (with a certainty some people expect or they won’t invest).
To some this is exciting, to some just scary. Guess who’ll survive.
